Every day, thousands of people find themselves in life threatening situations. Unfortunately, we live in a world where theft, rape and murder is an all too familiar headline. When situations like these arise, people are limited in the ways they can react. A person's first instinct is to call for help, usually 911, and alert the police of the situation. Fortunately, most people have a cellular phone so they can call from almost any location. However, in a state of high anxiety, fiddling for a phone, dialing, and speaking to the police can be a difficult and time-consuming process. Every second counts in life-threatening situations.
With all the advances in technology over the past decade, people are still using an emergency system that dates back to the 1960s. Solutions have been developed that allows the people to avoid the dialing aspect of calling the police. A Life Alert® system (a registered trademark of Life Alert Emergency Response, Inc.), allows people to contact an emergency representative with a push of a button of a wireless wearable pendant. The technology used in Life Alert® bounds the person using the service to a confined area, any call requested outside of that area does not go through. For college campus security, most campuses have “Blue Light” emergency phones scattered around their campus which puts you in direct contact with a police officer after finally locating one of these phones. Both of these solutions are more efficient ways of reaching out for help than traditional calls, however, they still require the person to speak and tell the responder who they are, where they are and what the nature of the situation is.